Here are words to pin to the Bush years like a wilting corsage: "We don't know what we paid for." That's a quote from Mary Ugone, the Defense Department's deputy inspector general for auditing, concerning massive Pentagon payments made during the occupation and war in Iraq for which there is no existing (or grossly inadequate) documentation. In fact, according to the inspector general for the Defense Department, "the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort." An internal audit of $8 billion that the Pentagon paid out to U.S. and Iraqi private contractors found that "nearly every transaction failed to comply with federal laws or regulations aimed at preventing fraud, in some cases lacking even basic invoices explaini…

Dismayed by Digital Substitutes, On-Call Buglers Step Up to Fill a GrowingNeed

By William WanWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, May 26, 2008

At the age of 71, this is how Joe Baldo spends his days. Retired and in the twilight of his life, he shuttles from cemetery to cemetery across Maryland. And everywhere he goes, he takes three pairs of white gloves, his meticulously pressed Air Force uniform and, in the back seat of his car, his 1933 Bach Stradivarius trumpet.

For 27 years, Baldo devoted his trumpet to his country. Day after day as a master sergeant in the Air Force, he sounded the sorrowful tune of taps at Arlington National Cemetery for soldiers' funerals.

When he retired, he thought he would finally give it all up. But then he heard about the boomboxes.

Cemeteries, struggling to keep up with droves of veterans and soldiers now dying, couldn't find enough trumpet players for the final honors. Some resorted to blasting taps from a boombox or CD player. Others began using &quo…

We live in a world of corrupt radio, concert ticket price-gouging, product placement in songs, Wal-Mart censorship—not to mention war, poverty, and the collapse of our health care system.

Music keeps us going through it all. Music makes us feel good. Music carries us past the stress. Music inspires us. Music makes the connections between people that give us hope for the future. Music insists that a better world is possible and music makes us believe that this can be true.

The above was the introduction to a email asking me for money thsi morning, they aren't getting my money but damn they sure got my attention for as far as I am concerned the above is the truth, or at least to me.

Once upon a time, I studied the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi -- until, that is, I realized I would never locate my "chi." At that point, I threw in the towel and took up Western exercise. Still, the principle behind Tai Chi stayed with me -- that you could multiply the force of an act by giving way before the force of others; that a smaller person could use the strength of a bigger one against him.

Now, jump to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath -- and you know the Tai Chi version of history from there. Think of it as a grim cosmic joke -- that the 9/11 attacks, as apocalyptic as they looked, were anything but. The true disasters followed and the wounds were largely self-inflicted, as the most militarily powerful nation on the planet used its own force to disable itself.Before that fateful day, the Bush administration had considered terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda subj…

“Nowhere in the world, in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet.” —Fidel Castro, 1998

When food riots broke out in Haiti last month, the first country to respond was Venezuela. Within days, planes were on their way from Caracas, carrying 364 tons of badly needed food.The people of Haiti are “suffering from the attacks of the empire’s global capitalism,” Venezuelan president Hugo Chàvez said. “This calls for genuine and profound solidarity from all of us. It is the least we can do for Haiti.”

Venezuela’s action is in the finest tradition of human solidarity. When people are hungry, we should do our best to feed them. Venezuela’s example should …

‘The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model’May 14, 2008 By Ian AngusSource: Socialist Voice"If the government cannot lower the cost of living it simply has to leave. If the police and UN troops want to shoot at us, that's OK, because in the end, if we are not killed by bullets, we'll die of hunger." — A demonstrator in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

In Haiti, where most people get 22% fewer calories than the minimum needed for good health, some are staving off their hunger pangs by eating "mud biscuits" made by mixing clay and water with a bit of vegetable oil and salt.[1]

Meanwhile, in Canada, the federal government is currently paying $225 for each pig killed in a mass cull of breeding swine, as part of a plan to reduce hog production. Hog farmers, squeezed by low hog prices and high feed costs, have responded so enthusiastically that the kill will likely use up all the allocated funds before the program ends in September.